Yes. The FBI continues to list Italian organized crime, including La Cosa Nostra, as an active investigative priority, and federal racketeering cases involving these groups are still brought. The organizations are smaller and less visible than in their mid century peak, but they have not disappeared.
What the name refers to
La Cosa Nostra translates as something close to this thing of ours. The phrase reached the American public in 1963, when Joseph Valachi described the structure in televised testimony before a Senate subcommittee. Before that hearing, the very existence of a formal national organization was disputed in public.
Federal agencies adopted the term, and it now appears in FBI materials describing Italian organized crime in the United States. It covers the American groups descended from Sicilian organizations, not the separate groups still operating in Italy, which are tracked under their own names.
The turning points
| Year | Event | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 1957 | The Apalachin meeting in upstate New York | A large gathering was disrupted by state police, making denial of a national structure difficult |
| 1963 | Senate testimony by Joseph Valachi | Put the internal structure and vocabulary on the public record |
| 1970 | The RICO statute becomes law | Allowed prosecution of leadership for an enterprise pattern of crime |
| 1985 to 1986 | The Commission Trial in New York | Demonstrated that RICO could reach the top of the hierarchy |
How the business changed
The classic revenue streams were loansharking, illegal gambling, extortion of businesses, and control of labor unions and the industries that depended on them, including construction and waste hauling. Decades of federal monitoring stripped much of the union leverage away, and that removed the most reliable income.
Federal descriptions of contemporary activity emphasize quieter work: health care and insurance fraud, securities fraud, illegal gambling operations, and extortion. The scale is far below the mid century era, and so is the visibility. Public spectacle attracted prosecutions, and the lesson was learned.
Why it did not simply end
Two things kept the structure alive. The first is that these are family and neighborhood organizations as much as criminal ones, so leadership replaces itself without recruitment drives. The second is that the underlying markets never closed. As long as there is demand for illegal gambling, untaxed goods, and loans outside the banking system, someone supplies it.
- The groups are smaller and more regional than the national picture drawn in the 1960s.
- Prosecutions continue, which is itself the plainest evidence the organizations still operate.
- Most modern activity is financial rather than confrontational.
- For current cases, the Department of Justice publishes press releases, which is a better source than any documentary.
